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Weirdening Weald Locations
Geography; From the air the Wood does not look a quarter as large but once entered... The Weirdening Weald is a sprawling, trackless forest of 3,500 square miles. Mountains, hills, rivers, and swamps corral and snake through a vast wilderness of old growth and dense underbrush. *'The Putrid Bog' is covered in brackish water and thick mud ranging from only a few inches deep at most points to as much as a few feet at others and is considered difficult terrain. Any non-resident of the bog must make a DC 14 Fortitude save or be sickened by the bog’s putrid stench for as long as they remain within its confines. A successful save renders its maker immune to the effects of the bog’s stench for the duration of their visit. Delay poison or neutralize poison removes the effect from the sickened creature, and renders them immune to the effects for the remainder of their visit. Creatures with immunity to poison are unaffected, and creatures resistant to poison receive their normal bonus on their saving throws. Despite the overwhelming smell of death and decay, the Putrid Bog is in fact teeming with life, most of it vile. At the heart of the Putrid Bog lies a ring of ancient standing stones. *'The Hanging Tree'; A lone, twisted tree rises from a small hill ahead of you. Skeletons, some with their hands still bound behind their backs, hang from strong branches high up in the tree. The branches creak as the skeletons twist and sway in the wind. By all appearances, these gruesome remains have been here for a very long time. The hanging tree is also a location for a Fey Gate, entering the Shadow Roads if the proper ritual and sacrifice are made. *'The Pit of Shadows'; An oblong pit yawns like a jagged wound in the ground in front of you. It is perhaps 20 feet across and at least twice that in length. A dense, almost palpable blackness seems to rise up from the depths of the pit. It is particularly difficult to see very far into the pit. PCs without low-light vision or darkvision cannot see more than a few feet. Even PCs who can see in the darkness find they are able to penetrate the thick blackness only half as far as normal. A DC 15 Perception check reveals a partially worn and eroded set of ancient stone steps cut into the sides of the pit. They wind their way precariously downward into the darkness before eventually ending at a stone ledge which juts out abruptly 60 feet below. The steps are extremely steep and uneven, making them difficult to navigate. PCs failing a DC 13 Acrobatics or Athletics check fall from the steps and crash to the stone ledge below, taking 3d6 points of damage *'The Dusk Queen's Tower'; The tower appears to be made of smooth black stone. There are no windows and only a single door. The tower is clearly in disrepair; bits of the stone have crumbled away and cracks run like spider webs across its surface. Vines snake up the outside, as if trying to choke the life from the tower, or perhaps pull it to the ground. A single, ornate door, crafted of sturdy darkwood and reinforced with black iron is the tower’s only entrance. *'Daerith Ri Ruin': Little remains of the temples of Daerith Ri, except for legends of relics and an archipelago of ruined stone arches rising from a sea of underbrush. Hedge witch Vara’s flock of 30 ravens roost on the arches and in treetop hovels whose entrances face the sky. This “roost” is also home to soul crows and several varieties of lesser blackbirds and ravens. *'Leperflower Trail': A “leper” colony of intelligent undead fled and have taken to the hollows and branches of the northern Weald. Their contagious positive energy illness weakens them, and its very existence threatens the unlife of their imperial ghoul and vampire knight masters. *'Armiger Wood': In the crook of Grandfather’s Tears lies a stretch of forest where rusty armor girdles the trees, as if a regiment of warriors had been transformed to gnarled wood or saplings had sprouted within suits of discarded plate. Forest goblins sometimes run through here beating on the tarnished breastplates like drums, a sure sign that they are whipping themselves up to cause major trouble. Despite years of this abuse and layers of rust, the armor shows no sign of falling apart. *'Cradle Grove:' The hearty maple trees in this grove feature giant burls at their bases. A natural depression on the top gives each burl a basin shape, and the formations collect rain water as it runs down the tree. Villagers from nearby Craiova Village ladle out the water and pour it over newborns in a forest baptism ceremony. Babes dedicated to the forest are left overnight in the burl cradles, defended only by the great trees. On full moon nights, as many as seven babies might be found lying in Cradle Grove. *'Darkbud Marsh': A sacred species of lily-of-the-valley grows in a marsh beside the River Argent. When this flower, like a chain of tiny white bells, is picked, it does not die. Instead, its buds blacken and wither when touched by sin, disloyalty, and deception. Weirdeners respect this flower that sees into the heart, but outsiders have no such compunction. Some courtiers and rich merchants have begun sewing it into their cuffs as an ostentatious display of their purity and honesty. Of course, they have the coin to replace the rare flower when it blackens. Forest folk worry that the outsiders will harvest the darkbud to extinction, a troubling fact in light of their belief that the flowers absorb the evil proclivities of the forest, and as the flowers’ numbers dwindle, the dark side of the forest slowly wakes. *'Five Wagon Oak': The largest oak south of the Pine Bogs once grew on the southern edge of the Central Weald. But an enterprising family of retired loggers chopped it down, cleared the surrounding land, and built an entire farming community out of its wood. The community is gone now. All that remains on the overgrown site is a forlorn windmill, covered in vines and moss. The creaking of the mill can still be heard in the dead of night, but the millfan has not turned in a century. Those who hear it slowly lose their minds. Messengers following the path near the mill have drowned themselves to escape its terrible creak. *'Grandfather’s Tears': In the center of the Central Weald, cedar water flows out of the Pine Bogs and feeds a lake. The lake overflows into an artery called Grandfather’s Tears, which crescents to the east, emerges from the Central Weald near Varlota Village, and joins the River heading south. Strange and terrible things, dead and alive, float out of the forest in Grandfather’s Tears. Over the millennia, trace magic has accumulated on the riverbed and infused the river water like salt. At night, the rocky riverbed glows with a faint blue luminescence. Dead organic material rots quickly when submerged. Wooden boats and oars decay quickly, making river travel nigh impossible. Aquatic wildlife have adapted to life spent breathing and swimming in the tainted water. Because the river removes protective layers of dead skin and scales before new skin grows underneath and wounds have the chance to heal, many species have developed regneration healing 1 to compensate. Those with higher fast healing survive and breed themselves to the top of the food chain. Overactive fast healing plagues the larger species with gigantism, growths, and vestigial limbs. Fish, eel, and frogs grow patches of horn plate instead of skin or scales, and many appear as devolved as the horseshoe crabs that skim the river bottom. Forest creatures that habitually eat them or slake their thirsts on Grandfather’s Tears appear equally changed. *'Moondrawn Caves:' A magical wellspring captures all whose face it reflects, including the moon. It carries moonlight to the deepest depths of a network of caves in the far north of the Weald. Far below the surface world, were-troglobites of incredible variety cavort in the echoing caverns with terrifying hybrid forms: salamanders with atrophied eyes and slimy skin lacking any pigment; crayfish with 4-ft.-long antennae and multi-jointed arms; and were-flatworms with transparent bodies and oversized saucer mouths lined with razor teeth. *'The Perches': Tall trees ring an unremarkable clearing. High overhead, their branches mingle in the wind. Deer-centaurs believe that the true-of-heart experience omens here. However, unless such petitioners know they are in a sacred place, they may walk on, oblivious to the signs that the trees cast as dappled light upon the forest floor. Deer-centaur now avoid “Spiritsign,” their old name for this site. Now they call it “the Perches” on account of the feral griffons that nest in the trees. *'Twilight Fork:' By day or night, Twilight Fork looks like an ordinary branching of a forest trail. But not so at twilight when ghostly fog and an ominous liminal quality settles upon the site. They say that a traveler, torn over a life and death decision, can take both paths at such times. One path leads half his soul to the reaper. The other path infuses the other half of his soul with the power to overcome whatever problem led him here. The desperate and the indecisive come to Twilight Fork, but only tattered half-souls leave. *'Lost Heart’s Copse:' Miles and miles of unoccupied forest surround a busy 30 acres. Here, the ghosts of bent-back men search the underbrush for lost items, missing loved ones, and the souls of their departed mates. They say that the forest leads all here who refuse to move on after loss. Any living creature that enters this area experiences temporary life-blindness. The creature sees only other creatures with life-blindness normally, all others appear incorporeal with muted voices. Unlike looking at the Material Plane from the Ethereal Plane, inanimate objects and dead creatures appear normal. *'Salt Springs:' A toxic, saltchoked water bubbles up through crusty sores between the rocks. As more water oozes up and cools, the salt precipitates from the suspension, accumulating around the vent and forming roughly man-sized pillars of salt over time. Few know of the site where the “salt men” stand amongst the trees. A brave kobold family risks making their way here to collect the salt men, bartering them within the forest and selling them beyond the wood to alchemists who claim the salt men have special properties. *'Sleepwalkers’ Hill:' In the northeastern corner of the Weald, atop a single forested hill, aerial plants drape over the branches like Spanish moss and drop their puffy pollen like snowflakes from the canopy. Once a year, Weald pixies collect the pollen and grind it into the dust that imbues their arrows with the power of sleep, charm, and memory loss. The pixies seem to be the only creatures who can remember the hill at all, which is quite remarkable. How can one forget the menagerie of individuals—beasts and humanoids alike—that wander here without yesterdays? *'Ashen Glades:' Legend claims that Pericles, Warrior who threw Lightning, scarring the face of the landscape with wide swathes of charred wood. To this day, nothing grows in these ashen glades. Blackened logs cover the forest floor, and the jagged edges of snapped trunks poke between them like a spiked pit of trees. Dozens of ala—black-whirlwind hags born of claw and lightning—nest in the charred tree trunks and herald preternatural storms that rage over the forest. The Weald tolerates the ala because the ala do not tolerate interlopers, especially humanoids. *'The Crumbling Tomb': Forgotten, covered in lichen, and gripped by ivy, the Crumbling Tomb rests in the eternal darkness of the canopy. Behind its mithral bar doors lies a mummified sage, guarded by a pair of sorcerous assassin vines. A unicorn is the only recurring visitor. Shadow fey legends say that when the time comes, the corpse will gain unlife and take sides in a pivotal conflict in the Weirdening Weald. At dawn, shadow ivy pulls the Crumbling Tomb underground, leaving a small chip of stone at the site. At dusk the Crumbling Tomb emerges in another location. Some say that the tomb is searching for something. *'Palewood': In a white birch copse no larger than a town market, a limestone outcrop rises nearly as high as the treetops. Riddled with warren-like holes, the crag is home to a burgeoning cadre of tiny wicker effigies. When a forest resident commits a sin, he or she weaves an effigy, divests the sin into it, sacrifices a month of life energy, and stakes the newly animated wicker man on the forest floor for the wild beasts to ravage. Sometimes the sin-eating effigies escape their ignominious fate. Why they gather at the crag at Palewood is a mystery that most forest folk believe is best left unsolved. *'Dead Druids’ Run:' A fast-running river thunders through the north end of the Central Heart of the Forest. Where the rapids are roughest, no trees or underbrush encroach near the river’s bank for 100 ft. Instead, an elliptical-patterned bank lies open to the sky. Rising from the whitewater, five jagged, roughly humanoid-shaped rocks burst toward the sky. The folk of nearby Village say the rocks were once druids encased in stone, presumably as punishment for some treacherous deed they committed. The nature of this deed remains long-forgotten. If one concentrates on drowning out the cacophony of the whitewater, a chorus of screams can be heard emanating from the rocks.